Pearland killer was on Cops as a toddler

Man in Pearland killing was on Cops as a toddler

PEGGY O’HARE, Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle

Published 5:30 am, Tuesday, June 15, 2010

ANGLETON — Years before he would face a potential death sentence for the abduction and shooting death of a Pearland woman, Nicholas-Michael Edwin Jean was featured on the television show Cops as a confused toddler watching Houston police trying to settle a violent domestic dispute between his grandparents.

Jean’s defense attorneys are hoping to show a video of that TV episode to a Brazoria County jury today so they can demonstrate the traumatic events to which he was exposed as a child.

Those attorneys are trying to save Jean’s life by persuading the jury to spare him from the death penalty after Jean, 22, pleaded guilty to capital murder for killing Susana Puente De Jesus, a 37-year-old Houston woman who was carjacked and abducted outside her Pearland workplace last year.

Judge to decide

Jurors are now in their fourth week of hearing testimony in the case. Since Jean has already pleaded guilty to capital murder, jurors must decide between sentencing Jean to life in prison without parole or sending him to Texas death row.

On Tuesday, District Judge Patrick Sebesta and attorneys watched a video of the Cops TV show while jurors were out of the room. The video shows Houston police responding to a home where a domestic dispute involving a gun had been reported.

When police arrived, the video shows Jean, then just 2 years old, standing outside with his grandmother, who told officers she had been struck in the head and threatened at gunpoint by her husband. Houston police then arrested Jean’s grandfather while the TV cameras filmed it.

Sebesta must decide whether the jury can see that video.

Despite that episode in Jean’s early childhood, his mother, Rita Washington, told jurors Tuesday that she did her best as a single mother to give her son a good upbringing.

She said she cannot reconcile the crimes her son is accused of with the son that she knows.

“I cannot make those dots connect for me,” Washington told jurors and Brazoria County District Attorney Jeri Yenne.

Grandfather’s death

Washington said Jean never misbehaved as a child until his other grandfather, who had been a father figure to him, died very suddenly when Jean was still young.

Yenne worked to show the jury that Jean had many behavioral problems at the many schools he attended, fighting with other students, mocking teachers and spitting on others.

She also asked Washington if she was aware that a teacher at Houston’s Robert E. Lee High School had asked that Jean be withdrawn from her classroom. Washington said she was aware of the fighting but said she did not know about much of the other behavior.

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